From the Introduction by Howard Nemerov: 

"My object in making this selection of Longfellow's work has been to exhibit a poet somewhat different from the one who wrote, e.g., 'A Psalm of Life,' 'Hiawatha,' 'The Wreck of the Schooner Hesperus.' 

Without trying to present him, in the result, as anything like a great poet (there are fewer of these than formerly thought), I shall claim for some of his productions an interest other than historical, scholarly, or biographical-an in- terest truly poetical, and undiminished by time."